Elections
Britain Is Celebrating 70 Years of a Queen Nobody Elected. Why Does That Still Work?
Queen Elizabeth II has now been monarch for seventy years. She inherited the throne in 1952 because her father was king. She has never faced an election, cannot be voted out and occupies an office…
Australia Changed Government. The More Interesting Change May Be Who Its Wealthiest Voters Abandoned.
Anthony Albanese was sworn in as prime minister on Monday after the Labor Party defeated Scott Morrison’s Liberal-National Coalition, ending almost nine years of conservative government. Only hours later, Albanese flew to Tokyo for a…
Sinn Féin Just Became Northern Ireland’s Largest Party. That Does Not Mean Ireland Is About to Reunify.
For the first time since Northern Ireland was created a century ago, an Irish nationalist party has won the largest number of seats in its devolved legislature. Sinn Féin emerged from Thursday’s Assembly election with…
Slovenia Just Gave a Party That Barely Existed a Landslide. Is That Democratic Renewal or Political Instability?
Last week I wrote that France’s old party system had largely disappeared even though its constitution and electoral institutions remained intact. This week, another European election has produced an even more striking example of how…
Macron Has Won Again. That Does Not Mean France Has Chosen Macronism.
He defeated Marine Le Pen tonight with 58.55% of valid votes against 41.45%, securing a second five-year term and becoming the first French president in two decades to win re-election while still governing. On the…
France Still Has the Same Democracy. It No Longer Has the Same Political System.
Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen will face each other in the second round of the presidential election on 24 April, repeating the runoff of 2017. Macron finished first with 27.85% of the vote and…
Imran Khan Has Been Removed. Pakistan’s Institutions May Have Just Passed a Harder Test.
Shortly after midnight, Pakistan’s National Assembly voted 174–0 in favour of the no-confidence motion against him after members of Khan’s party largely left the chamber. He becomes the first prime minister in Pakistan’s history to…
Imran Khan May Lose Power. The More Important Question Is Whether Pakistan’s Institutions Can Win.
Pakistan has spent the last week approaching what should, in principle, be a fairly ordinary event in a parliamentary democracy: a prime minister may no longer possess the confidence of parliament. The reality has become…
Myanmar’s Military Says It Will Not Negotiate. That May Be the Problem.
Myanmar’s military marked Armed Forces Day today with a parade in Naypyitaw and a message that was much more politically important than the ceremony itself. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who led the military coup…
Italy Spent a Week Trying to Find a New President. It Ended Up Asking the Old One to Stay.
Italy has spent almost an entire week trying to elect a new president. After eight rounds of voting, hundreds of blank ballots, failed compromises between political parties and an increasingly obvious inability to agree on…
Boris Johnson Says He Thought It Was a Work Event. That Isn’t Really the Most Important Question.
On 20 May 2020, Britain was living under some of the most extraordinary restrictions on ordinary life imposed in peacetime. People could not freely meet friends and family. Weddings and funerals were heavily restricted. Millions…
One Week After Lula Took Office, Bolsonaro Supporters Stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and Presidential Palace.
Exactly one week ago, I wrote that Brazil’s institutions had successfully transferred power from Jair Bolsonaro to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva without requiring Bolsonaro’s personal approval. Lula had won the election, the result had…
